Ubisoft's Child of Light is many things. It's a fairy tale, a story of a young princess in a strange, ethereal dream world named Lemuria. It's also an homage to Japanese role-playing games, whose style inspired the game's own watercolor artwork. And the game mechanics, storytelling, and design are all tied together with an indie sentiment, pulling cues from groundbreaking titles such as Journey and Limbo. Yet Child of Light is a game entirely its own. With captivating dialogue, a colorful cast of characters, and a world worth exploring, Child of Light may be the best $15 you'll spend on games in 2014.

Once Upon a Time...

The common cornerstone of successful fantasy franchises is strong world-building. Whether your mind races to the cobbled streets of The Shire, the snowy forests of Winterfell, or musty dungeons in Dark Souls, these are all worlds players want to delve into. Child of Light's Lemuria rewards such exploration.

The game begins with our heroine leaving our reality. The daughter of an Austrian duke, Aurora is flung into another world where she must quickly make sense of her surroundings and battle a variety of monsters and villains (including an evil stepmother—sound familiar?) if she ever hopes to see her father again. Yes, she does the battling. Child of Light's creative director Patrick Plourde says he wanted to make sure there was no prince charming or other traditional male hero clichés.

Child of Light's most eye-catching quality is its visuals; the game looks like a watercolor painting in motion. Impressed by the art from the Montpellier studios' Rayman Legends, Ubisoft Montreal also worked with UbiArt Framework, a proprietary game engine that transforms illustrations into animation, to give Child of Light its distinctive style. The result is seamless gameplay, bolstered in part by its particle fluid system seen most noticeably with Aurora's constantly writhing head of hair.

To keep up its fairy-tale tone, all of the game's dialogue and cutscenes are written in rhyme, including heroic couplets, and ballads. This sing-song quality reinforces the idea that players are navigating a story and every battle is like the turn of a page.

Predictably, the game deals with light-versus-dark imagery. Our heroine gathers a varied company of allies, each with his or her (or its) own helpful skills and abilities. Among them you find the expected classes, such as mage, fighter, healer, ranger, and bard, while Aurora is a battlemage equipped with a sword and light-based spells. One character, a small spirit named Igniculus, trails behind Aurora and is able to explore unreachable passages, heal party members, slow enemies in combat, and can be completely controlled by a second player, opening up Child of Light into a multiplayer experience.

Talent Trees and JRPGs

Although stunning visuals and a well-crafted world can entice players, it doesn't guarantee they'll make it all the way to the end credits. Art style is the beauty that seduces and game mechanics the guts and bones that hold everything together.

Child of Light is both a side-scrolling platformer and an RPG. Unlike most RPGs (though not all), Aurora explores Lemuria in two dimensions, but instead of hacking and slashing her way through enemies, the game veers into its RPG-like characteristics and opens up into a turn-based battle system. However, there are a few tweaks and additions here as well.

At its core, the game's combat borrows heavily from the JRPG series Grandia. During each battle, two heroes (and also Igniculus) square off against two or three enemies. Below is a timeline split in two with an icon representing each character and slowly the icons move left to right. Once a character reaches the end of the first section, titled "wait," players choose what fight move, spell, item, defense, or other actions they want to perform for the turn. Each ability has a different cast time, ranging from "Instant" to "Very Long." These cast times dictate how fast the character's icon will move on the second part of the timeline, known as "cast."

This is where real strategy enters Child of Light's battle system. If a character, whether friend or foe, is attacked during this casting period, they're interrupted, losing their action and sending backward on the timeline. Well-timed attacks and strategic protection spells will determine whether you pass through Lemuria with ease or difficulty.

Once you've wasted every bad guy in sight, your entire team, whether they've battled or not, gains experience points. Once a character levels, players open up a sprawling talent tree. Each level awards a character one point to spend on a new skill. Of Aurora's 73 separate skills, some nodes only offer bumps in base stats, such as strength, defense, magic, dodge percentage, speed, etc. Others offer you new attacks, spells, or the chance to upgrade existing abilities into more powerful forms. With a sense of exploration and mild level grinding, you'll have about 50 or so levels until you reach the endgame boss, so be sure to map out how you want to build each character and plan accordingly.

Leveling isn't the only way to make improve your party. Using Oculi, the game's blanket term for jewels such as diamonds, emeralds, amethysts, and sapphires, Child of Light presents an armor and weapons upgrading system that's simple yet addicting. During your journey through Lemuria, players will stumble upon lots Oculi hidden away in chests or awarded as spoils after battle. Each Oculi have specific properties and effects that govern magic, health, strength, and elemental bonuses. Similar Oculi combine together to form more powerful enchantments. For example, three rubies creates a tumbled ruby, three tumbled rubies create a faceted ruby, and (you guessed it) three faceted rubies create a brilliant ruby. At each level, the Oculi's enhancements, abilities, and protections improve.

Although this game has many strengths, it has only one weakness—it's just not very hard. Throughout Child of Light's near 12 hours of gameplay, I never died once. That's not to say I didn't come close a time or two, and it is essential to master certain battle strategies and character synergies, but the game offers tons of opportunities to heal characters whether with wishes, Igniculus' own healing power, or tons of potions.

After you've completed one run through of Child of Light, the game offers a New Game+ option, which restarts the journey and carries over your character build and stronger enemies, but the complete absence of danger could bore some RPG veterans. However, the devs do include harder difficulties to equally match the game to your level of experience—or at least your level of patience.

Bottom Line: Buy It

Child of Light's casual gameplay invites those new to RPGs, and its multiplayer makes the game family-friendly, like sharing a favorite fairy tale before bedtime. It's simple side-scrolling facade is an illusion as you dig deeper into the game's mechanics and see decently detailed talent trees and a fight system that requires serious thought and strategy. Although Child of Light is a relatively easy stroll through Lemuria, it's definitely worth the visit.

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